Artworks

Randomized Text, History of Stars #2, 2006

  • Artist

    Charles Gaines

  • Title

    Randomized Text, History of Stars #2

  • Date

    2006

  • Medium

    Digital print and color pencil on paper

  • Dimensions

    Frame: 54 3/4 x 22 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (139.1 x 57.2 x 3.8 cm)

  • Credit line

    The Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition Committee

  • Object Number

    2007.21

Invested in the meaning of systems and structures, Charles Gaines here juxtaposes what appear to be random images and phrases to test the expansive potential of language. A photograph of the night sky is paired with arbitrarily sequenced sentences from two iconic texts: Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and cultural theorist Edward Said’s groundbreaking book Orientalism (1978). Sentence by sentence, Gaines produces a new, poetic message that signals the way in which words, much like the cosmos, are haphazard until assigned subjective meaning through the endless possibilities of a human perspective.


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Artworks

Randomized Text, History of Stars #2, 2006

  • Artist

    Charles Gaines

  • Title

    Randomized Text, History of Stars #2

  • Date

    2006

  • Medium

    Digital print and color pencil on paper

  • Dimensions

    Frame: 54 3/4 x 22 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (139.1 x 57.2 x 3.8 cm)

  • Credit line

    The Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum purchase with funds provided by the Acquisition Committee

  • Object Number

    2007.21

Invested in the meaning of systems and structures, Charles Gaines here juxtaposes what appear to be random images and phrases to test the expansive potential of language. A photograph of the night sky is paired with arbitrarily sequenced sentences from two iconic texts: Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and cultural theorist Edward Said’s groundbreaking book Orientalism (1978). Sentence by sentence, Gaines produces a new, poetic message that signals the way in which words, much like the cosmos, are haphazard until assigned subjective meaning through the endless possibilities of a human perspective.


Explore further